Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Robert Kagan - More Leaks, Please - Regarding the NIE leak to the NYT and Washington Post on how the war has supposedly increased the numbers of terrorists. How do we know this? Is there a list somewhere? Do they have a team roster? And these are the same people who admit that they had no idea what was going on in Iraq before the war? Now we should believe them?

For instance, what specifically does it mean to say that the Iraq war has worsened the "terrorism threat"? Presumably, the NIE's authors would admit that this is speculation rather than a statement of fact, since the facts suggest otherwise. Before the Iraq war, the United States suffered a series of terrorist attacks: the bombing and destruction of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998, the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in 2000, and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Since the Iraq war started, there have not been any successful terrorist attacks against the United States. That doesn't mean the threat has diminished because of the Iraq war, but it does place the burden of proof on those who argue that it has increased.